Skip to main content
Main

Bouillabaisse

A French fish soup made with various fish, mussels, onions, wine, saffron, and parsley root.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Bouillabaisse

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash, scale, and clean the fish; cut them into nice pieces and place them in a saucepan.

  2. Add the shelled mussels to the fish.

  3. Gradually pour in the salad oil and add the onions with cloves stuck in them.

  4. Add the bay leaf, lemon slices, salt, and pepper to taste.

  5. Pour cold water or fish stock over the fish until covered.

  6. Add the white wine and powdered saffron.

  7. Scrape and add the parsley root to the soup.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil on a brisk fire for 15 minutes.

  2. Boil quickly, then soak slices of toast in the soup and place them in a deep dish.

  3. Pour the soup through a sieve into the dish and arrange the pieces of fish nicely.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Lemon + saffrontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together538 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Saffron + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Fish (carp, perch, whiting, gurnet, tench)
Forms the main body of the soup, providing the flesh served in the dish.
Mussels
Add briny, savoury flavour to the broth as they cook with the fish.
Salad oil
Adds fat and carries flavour through the broth.
Onions
Release sweetness and aroma into the broth as they simmer.
White wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the broth.
Powdered saffron
Gives the broth its characteristic yellow colour and distinctive aroma.

The step that matters

Boil on a brisk fire for 15 minutes. A brisk boil emulsifies the oil and fish into the broth, but boiling too hard can break the delicate fish into shreds. Keeping the fish in large pieces and the boil steady helps the soup stay clear and the fish intact.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (whiting, lemon, pepper, fish, white wine, saffron, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against whiting, lemon, pepper, fish, white wine, saffron, parsley. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesFried FishFried Fish120 recipesFish CroquettesFish Croquettes81 recipesScalloped CodScalloped Cod69 recipes